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THE BIBLE IS NOT ENOUGH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 3, 2026 – I love the Bible. I’ve written here and here and elsewhere how important the Bible is to me. I carry one with me wherever I go, and at home I’m surrounded by them. I favor the King James version, though I’m open to other translations.
But the Bible alone is not enough. The Bible alone can’t take you where you need to go. Just before he went Home, Jesus told his followers that there were so many more things he needed to say to them, but they weren’t ready to hear them yet. So he promised he’d send God’s Spirit of Truth to teach them when they were ready.
Jesus’ promise to his early followers is also his promise to us. Jesus didn’t say to make an idol of God’s written Word and bow down to it as the sole authority. No; he never once said that. He himself contradicted the Old Testament on occasion, such as when he overrode Moses’ permission on granting divorces or when he directed us to love our enemies rather than to curse them. This wasn’t just a radical reinterpretation of accepted scripture; it was a whole new Word.
Those of us who are genuinely bornagain are still being taught by God’s Spirit of Truth. This was Jesus’ promise to us, his followers, and Jesus never breaks his promises. Still, there are those who claim that private revelation must accord with scripture, and if it doesn’t, it’s not from God. What would those same people say about Jesus’ private revelations forming the basis for the Gospel, seeing how in so many instances those revelations defied scripture?
We are constantly being taught by God through his Spirit of Truth. We are directed by God, informed by God, cautioned by God, chastised by God, humored by God, and most of all loved by God, all through his Spirit, as promised by Jesus. We all received a measure of God’s Spirit at our rebirth, and it is through this Spirit residing in us that we’re able to receive God’s revelations, which are actually just God’s teachings, which are actually just God talking to us, one-on-one, as our Father, as any loving father would talk one-on-one to his beloved child. Each of us receives God’s words according to our individual abilities at any given time, just as Jesus promised.
As I said, I love the Bible and I enjoy reading it every day. But I love my one-on-one time with God more. I cherish his private revelations to me just as much as I cherish his public ones in scripture. In some cases, I cherish the private revelations more because they’re so deeply personal and show God’s overwhelming love for me. Some of these revelations I share; most of them I don’t, depending on God’s guidance. Jesus shared some things publicly, other things he shared privately (among his disciples and friends), and some things he didn’t share at all but kept them just between him and God. Jesus promised us we’d have that same intimacy with God—the same access to private revelation—when the time came.
Thank God it’s come.
I love the Bible, but the Bible alone is not enough.
I love God’s Word, but I love God more.
THE WELLSPRING OF PRIVATE REVELATION
CHARLO, New Brunswick, February 27, 2024 – I stumbled across a website today that preached the primacy of the Bible as the sole source of Christian revelation. To the website’s authors, the Bible should be used not only to inform but to restrict information and dictate behavior. Private revelation, which if you’ll recall forms the basis for both the Old and the New testaments, should not be trusted. In other words, the website promotes that God allegedly stopped talking to his people after John signed off on his book of Revelation nearly 2000 years ago, and none of us have heard a peep from him since.
This is obviously nonsense. The whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was to pay the sin price so that “whosoever will” could get back in right relationship with God through spiritual rebirth. The establishment of God’s Church on Earth, with Jesus as the high priest and born-again believers as priests and prophets, has reopened the doors of communication with God through his Holy Spirit. Recall that in the gospel of John, Jesus promised us we’d be able to go directly to God in prayer; we wouldn’t have go through anyone else, not even him. So if we born-again believers are back in right relationship with God and have an open channel of communication with him and with Jesus through God’s Holy Spirit (as promised by Jesus in John’s gospel), how can we not be receiving private revelation? Our whole relationship with God and Jesus is based on private revelation.
We should never dismiss the reality of private revelation. It plays a profound role in the body of believers and always has. Without private revelation, there would be no Bible because there would be no prophets to relay God’s Word. Jesus didn’t warn us to beware of prophets; he warned us to beware of false prophets. A prophet is someone who has been sent by God and speaks God’s Word on behalf of God. A false prophet is someone who has not been sent by God and so does not speak God’s Word, even if he or she quotes the Bible, chapter and verse.
Private revelation has not ceased in the intervening years between Jesus’ earthly ministry and now. God has not stopped talking with his people and is in fact with them 24/7 rather than just on occasion as he was with the Old Testament prophets. We born-again believers are profoundly blessed to have ongoing communication with God through his Spirit, but this also comes with a great responsibility. God expects much more from his children than he does from others. We are to speak his Word in Truth as he gives us guidance to speak it, not when we decide on our own volition to speak it. He’ll test us on this, to see how much he can entrust us with.
I love the Bible and dote on it; I sleep next to it, read it every day, and carry it with me wherever I go, but I also know that the Bible’s been messed with, especially in the agenda-driven retranslations and in the leaving out of certain books. The Bible contains men’s words as well as God’s Word, so I don’t worship the Bible. I don’t consider it a holy relic. I don’t hold it up for adoration. I use it as a resource, which is what God intends us to use it for, but it’s God’s communication to me through his Holy Spirit that is the pure source perpetually springing up in me. That wellspring has not been messed with and is the source of my private revelation, the source that Jesus promised us that God would give to all genuine believers.
Private revelation from God to his people has never ceased and never will, as it forms the basis of our relationship with God. In Old Testament times, private revelation came via designated prophets, who were then to relay the revelation either to the general public or to a specific people or to certain individuals, but now God’s revelations flow through born-again believers as one of God’s many kept promises that are rewards for Jesus’ sacrifice.
Regardless of what the “Bible or nothing!” website claims, we should never be wary or dismissive of private revelation coming from genuine believers; we should, however, be wary of so-called revelations from those who claim to be speaking on God’s behalf but are not. We’ll know the difference between those who are sent by God and those who aren’t because God will let us know through (you guessed it!) private revelation.
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I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.
Jeremiah 31:33-34
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If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
John 14:23
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But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
John 4:14
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A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 